Black Friday

by James Patterson

  It was Billie Bogan …

  Like the poet, Louise.

  He was angry with himself, disappointed that he’d let the woman affect him. It was unlike him; it was undisciplined and out of character for Hudson to permit such a distraction before his mission was complete. Yet somehow he felt he could handle it, that he could keep everything in perspective …

  Or was he fooling himself? Was she going to be the reason he finally ruined everything? The one serious slip-up, his fatal flaw? Would he allow himself to blow Green Band because of Billie Bogan? This woman he barely knew.

  He needed to see her at least once more, he decided. Tonight, if he could. The most vivid images of Billie suddenly drifted past his eyes.

  Hudson felt himself aroused. He threw on an old mufti shirt and trousers and went down to the lobby. He prowled around nervously, watched by a clerk at the desk. He finally called the Vintage service, not wanting to use the phone in his own room.

  “I’d like to see Billie. Tonight if possible. This is David. Number 323.”

  There was a pause as he was put on hold; three or four minutes, which seemed even longer.

  “Billie’s not on her beeper. She doesn’t seem to be available right now.” The answer came back. “You could meet one of our other escorts. They’re very beautiful. Former and part-time models and actresses, David.”

  David Hudson hung up the telephone. He felt disappointed, unsatisfied, empty in a cold, gnawing way …. Maybe he couldn’t handle this right now. Maybe he shouldn’t ever try to see Billie again.

  The idea of blowing Green Band over some English whore—almost made him laugh. It would be ludicrously funny—if it all ended like that.

  Only David Hudson knew that was impossible. The final Green Band plan was flawless. It was so good, it could work without him from here on.

  Deception, David Hudson remembered. The very beginnings of Green Band.

  Deception and illusion that had started as far back as Viet Nam.

  Chapter 54

  La Hoc Noh Prison: July, 1971

  CAPTAIN DAVID HUDSON’S TORTURED, one-hundred-and-fifteen-pound frame slumped forward. The fragile shell of his body threatened to shatter into pieces, to collapse in exhaustion or perhaps death. Hudson’s mind silently screamed for him to give up this useless fight.

  What remained of his body was wracked by pain, intense suffering that would have been unthinkable before the last eleven months in North Vietnamese prison camps. He was unsuccessfully trying to put his mind somewhere else now. He ached to be outside the seething bamboo hut, somewhere safe and relatively sane in his past, even as far back as his Kansas boyhood.

  He’d been trained to resist interrogation and enemy brainwashing. Sisyphus, the program was called at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

  He remembered that now. Sisyphus had prepared him for enemy interrogation—or so the Army instructors had told him.

  You must put your mind in another place altogether.

  It had sounded so simple, so coldly, attractively logical as a concept. Now it seemed absurd, infuriating in its stupidity and typical American arrogance. Sisyphus had been another fraud invented by the U.S. Army … The Lizard Man, the North Vietnamese commandant of La Hoc Noh, mechanically raised a white stone game marker.

  He put one of David Hudson’s black stones in check.

  There was a hard clack of the playing piece against the polished teak board.

  The North Vietnamese prison guards, all dressed in muddy black pajamas, tipped homemade rice wine from long-necked green bottles. They snorted ridiculing laughter at this obvious mismatch of competitors.

  The prison camp commandant was swift, completely sure of his game moves. He was on a different skill level, Hudson understood.

  According to the rules of Go, the game should have been played with a sizable handicap called okigo. Should have been …. But strict adherence to rules meant nothing here because this was a place beyond all decency, all logic, all understanding.

  “Yow play!” the Lizard Man once again screeched. “Yow play now!”

  He seemed to want his victory right now: the cruel bloodletting—the slow death for the loser in the festering jungle swamps just beyond the prison camp.

  The guards were physical extensions of their leader’s personality. They too became impatient now, grumbling and growling for faster action.

  Clack!

  David Hudson made an obviously ridiculous, almost an arbitrary move on the Go board. He smiled crookedly at the commandant, as if he’d suddenly turned the game in his favor.

  “You play!” Hudson snapped. He knew the smile on his face was hopelessly spacey, but he savored the small moment of triumph.

  The Lizard Man was momentarily confused.

  Then he howled shrill, birdlike laughter.

  The Vietnamese soldiers howled laughter as well. They inched closer to the two players as the commandant made a surprisingly conservative move with one of his white stones.

  Disappointment etched itself across the soldiers’ faces. Here was uncertainty for the first time. Hudson was amazed at the commandant’s hesitation.

  “Yow!” Lizard Man screamed. “Fast play! Yow play riii now!”

  “Fuck you, asshole …. Watch this one.”

  A smile, hollow and incomprehensible, slipped across David Hudson’s blistered lips.

  Once again, he made a bizarre, a seemingly pointless and foolish game move.

  “You play!” he said in a barely audible whisper. “You play fast, too.”

  The Lizard Man squinted, and studied the exquisite, highly reflective teak board more closely. He gazed into Captain Hudson’s bloodshot eyes, then looked down again at the Go board.

  The guards crushed in closer still.

  This was getting better, more dramatic, finally. A real game was starting to develop.

  The soldiers began to whisper among themselves. They were tike the professional gamblers, the unsavory flotsam always crowded into the fantan parlors of Saigon.

  Something interesting and curious was happening in the game of Go now. Even the camp commandant was confused, troubled by his American opponent, by his seemingly unfathomable moves.

  For the first time, one of the prison camp guards offered a side bet on the American officer. The commandant threw the soldier the most bitter glance.

  Suddenly then, smoothly and so coolly, as if he was performing an ordinary movement such as lighting a cigarette, Captain Hudson removed the revolver from one of the Vietnamese soldiers’ dangling holsters.

  Hudson swiveled back to the straight ahead position, directly facing the Lizard Man.

  Once again, the faint half-crazed smile crossed David Hudson’s blistered lips. “Fucker. Miserable shit fucker.”

  A heartbeat later, the revolver thundered.

  It was like an Army field cannon in the tiny bamboo room. White smoke blossomed everywhere around the game table.

  Unbelievably, the commandant’s head flew straight back. Bone cracked hard against the wooden wall’s main support post. The commandant’s military hat sailed away saucer style across the smoking hut.

  A dark hole gushed like slashed fruit in the Vietnamese officer’s forehead. The Lizard Man’s mouth dropped open to show broken, ugly yellow teeth. A lathering, pale white tongue flopped out.

  David Hudson reflexively fired the service revolver a second time.

  He fired a third time.

  He felt like a weary, wildly confused child—playing with a toy gun. Bang, bang, bang.

  He thrust the point of the revolver directly in the frozen eyes of the guard who had provided the weapon. The man’s face shattered. Skull, flesh, bone flew apart.

  Another Viet Cong guard was shot in the throat.

  The two remaining guards had dropped their liquor bottles; they were struggling to get out holstered pistols.

  The next three deafening gunshots tore through one man’s chest, pierced the other’s stomach, then his heart. The foul-smelling
, boiling jungle hut was suddenly a bloody abattoir.

  Then Hudson was running outside the command hut. He limped badly on legs that felt like they couldn’t actually be his.

  He stumbled, scrambled forward on the unfamiliar, unsteady supports. His legs were like wooden stilts.

  Every object he saw seemed part of a blurred, impossible dream. Everywhere he looked, there was harsh unreality. A late-afternoon sun flared orange and bright red over the wall of jungle green. Screeching monkeys skittered away from the place of so many gunshots. Insects buzzed between the trees.

  David Hudson awkwardly weaved back and forth across the exposed exercise yard.

  He ducked into the thick jungle that kept threatening to swallow up the prison camp, and served as a natural barrier to escape for all the prisoners. Hudson lunged forward. He tripped ahead anyway.

  He had no choice now.

  Nowhere to go but into the terrifying jungle.

  He was breathless already, clumsily crashing against trees, against thick, tangled jungle brush. He kept running, faster than he thought possible.

  Dizziness grabbed and clawed at him. Whirling bright colors came. Shivering cold flashes.

  He kept running, zigzagging forward, vomiting bile like it was exhaust. As the jungle foliage got thicker, the trail became darker than he thought possible—almost complete blackness less than five hundred yards from the Vietnamese camp.

  He ran forward anyway. A half mile, a mile—he had no idea of either time or space now.

  A paralyzing thought struck at him and suddenly held David Hudson tight as the final grip of death. They weren‘t even chasing him …. They weren’t even giving chase back into the jungle.

  Hudson continued running—falling, picking himself up, falling, picking himself up, falling, picking himself up.

  Then it was so dark there was nothing left in the world. Hudson kept running. Falling, picking himself up.

  Falling, picking himself up.

  Falling, falling, falling …

  A song from the Doors played in his head. “Horse Latitudes” … then nothing at all …

  Hudson woke with a nightmarish jolt. A silent scream never made it out of his tight, dry larynx.

  Long grass was stuck to one side of his face. Sticky, gummy tears had formed in his half-closed eyes.

  Fat black flies had attached themselves to his lips and nostrils. Hundreds of black flies were plastered all over his body.

  Trying to right himself, he nearly laughed out loud. It was exactly as he’d always believed this putrid affair called life to be: resolutely unfair, pointless in the end, and in the beginning, and in the middle, too. Anyone with any reason could see the absurd eternal pattern. David Hudson fell away into the unrelenting darkness once again. “Horse Latitudes” played again. Why that fucking song now?

  He woke again. Wildly confused. Unnaturally alert.

  He had to concentrate everything, every trace of energy he had now. He wrestled with himself to stay awake, to hold on to a thin, sane lifeline. Tormenting waves, disconnected images and thoughts kept coming. Ghosts just beyond his full comprehension. Raging rivers of shadowy, half-formed images, words, hellish fantasy shapes. Almost a psychedelic experience. As if he’d been smoking the strongest Thai sticks. Shooting skag ….

  This was so horrible, too horrible, too much for anyone to take much longer. What happened to him then? What did it feel like when you cracked wide open? … The severe gagging stopped as soon as he wasn’t thinking about it.

  Hudson began to scream. He was swimming toward some kind of release. Eternity was rushing forward—leaping at him in the form of a sea of leeches, screeching, clawing monkeys, indistinct, shadowy, jungle insects and reptiles. He screamed for hours without end.

  Then the prison camp guards came!

  So suddenly.

  They were there! On him! Everywhere!

  Busy hands were scrabbling, poking, reaching all over his body …

  Hot hands were probing, continually poking him. Blood roared in the funnels of Hudson’s ears. The vicious leeches were crawling all over him, too. Sharp little leech stings. Strong hands were lifting him.

  Then whispering, almost choral voices. There were no distinct, recognizable words.

  “Leave me alone! Leave me alone!” Hudson was pinioned down and helpless. “Please leave me alone!”

  Something large and jet black, a huge flapping bird grabbed on to his face. It smelled like burning rubber, even worse than that. It began to crawl all over his face.

  “Get it off me! Get it off me! Please get it off me!”

  A shaft of light suddenly opened. Gleaming, almost beautiful light shone in his deep dark tunnel of terror.

  A scream came that seemed very far away …. No! … It was his own scream.

  Impossible.

  Impossible.

  This was so impossible.

  Army corpsmen were staring down …

  Army corpsmen were staring down …

  Army corpsmen were staring down …

  Ours.

  Our corpsmen!

  Chapter 55

  “BREATHE DEEPLY, CAPTAIN HUDSON. Just breathe now. Just breathe. Breathe. There, that’s good. That’s very good …. That’s excellent, Captain Hudson.

  “It’s pure oxygen, Captain. Oxygen! Don’t think right now. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe deeply.”

  White cloth straps were holding him tightly, painfully so. Blue and red plastic tubes ran in and out of his nose. More tubes were connected to his arms and legs. Colored wires, rubber plugs were attached to his chest, and from there to an icy blue machine.

  “Captain Hudson. Captain, can you hear me? Can you understand me?”

  “You’re in the Womack Hospital at Fort Bragg, Captain. You’re going to be all right. Just fine. Captain, can you understand me? You’re in the Womack Hospital?”

  “Oh please help me.”

  He was sobbing uncontrollably for the first time since he’d been a little boy. What was happening? Oh please, what was this? What was real and what wasn’t?

  “Captain, you’re in the Fort Bragg Center. You’re in the JFK Special Forces Center. Captain Hudson? Captain? … just breathe the oxygen! Captain, that’s an order. Breathe in … breathe out … that’s very good. Very, very good. That’s excellent.”

  Lying on his back, staring silently up at vague forms and swimming shapes, David Hudson thought that maybe he knew this man. How was that?

  Familiar voice? Familiar drooping blond walrus moustache. Did he know him? Was the man actually there? Hudson reached forward to touch, but couldn’t move because of the cloth straps.

  “Captain Hudson, you’re in the Fort Bragg Center for Special Forces. This was a stress and tolerance test. Do you remember now?

  “Captain Hudson, this has been a drug-induced test. You haven’t left this room inside the hospital. You were flashing back to Viet Nam.”

  Nothing real?

  None of this happened? …

  No—there had been a Viet Cong prison camp!

  Hallucinations? …

  There had been a Lizard Man!

  Oh, please, make this all stop now.

  “Captain Hudson, you revealed nothing about your mission. You passed your tolerance test. Flying colors. You were really great. Congratulations.”

  Mission?

  A test?

  Sure thing. Just a little pop quiz. Okay.

  “You’re beginning to understand illusion, Captain. You refused to be interrogated under drugs …. You’re learning to be illusion’s master. You’re learning the fine art of deception, Captain Hudson. The art of our deadliest enemies …”

  “Horse Latitudes” was playing somewhere in the hospital….In the Special Forces Center. Deception.

  “Breathe that good air, Captain Hudson. Just breathe in easily. Pure, pure oxygen. You passed, Captain. You’re the best so far. You’re the best we’ve tested.”

  Stress and tolerance tests.

 
The Womack Hospital at Fort Bragg.

  Deception.

  He was learning to be illusion’s master.

  You passed, Captain Hudson. Flying colors.

  Of course—I’m the best you have!

  I’ve always been the best—at everything.

  That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?

  That’s why I was chosen for this training.

  Hallucination.

  Deception.

  Important to understand.

  The key!

  The solution, the answer to everything was deception!

  “Breathe that pure oxygen, Captain Hudson.”

  Chapter 56

  CARROLL WAS BARELY AWAKE, barely functioning.

  Familiar home surroundings coalesced … Books on the mantel—The Brethren, Fatal Vision, The Pope of Greenwich Village, The Fate of the Earth…. An oil painting of his father, done by Mary Katherine, hung on one wall.

  And there were children.

  Lots and lots of children.

  They were eyeing him suspiciously, waiting for him to speak, to say something characteristically flip and amazing.

  Carroll slowly sipped fresh-brewed coffee from a cracked Revenge of the Jedi mug. “Sunrise Semester” flickered on the TV with the sound off. The horizontal line lazily flipped out of synch with the rest of the room.

  The Carroll clan was together for a rare family conference. Coffee, cocoa, and Carroll’s world-famous pop-up toaster French toast comprised the menu.

  “Mmff… mmff… Lizzie mmff… Lizzie was a son of a bitch, Dad. While you were gone away.”

  Mickey Kevin reported this news as he chewed heavily syruped wads of toast His mouth flapped open in a rubbery, half-smiling circle.

  “I think I told you about that kind of gutter talk.”

  “Mmff, mmff. You use gutter talk.”

  “Yeah, maybe my dad didn’t kick my rear end enough. I won’t make that same mistake, okay.”

  “Besides, I wasn’t a son of a bitch. He was.” Lizzie suddenly glared up from the soggy remains on her plate.

  “Lizard! You’re not too big to get an Ivory soap sandwich, either. Big bar, right fresh out of the wrapper.”

  The most angelic smile lit up Lizzie’s face. “An Ivory soap sandwich, Daddy?… Better than Eggo, still-a-little-frozen French toast!” She leveled her father with a deadpan, brutal evaluation of his not entirely home-cooked breakfast offerings.